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Dec 30, 2018 at 11:36 AM

It was way too long.

Over a decade since I had last seen my son.

The fault was mainly mine.

In his later, teenage wild out years, I couldn’t and didn’t want to risk my out spoken, take no shit,quick to throw a snap back to anyone that dares to make a disrespectful under the breath comment about his lifestyle.

He proudly defends his crown of me labeling him the gayest man on earth.

So for him to come to visit me at Canaan, one of the most violent penitentiaries in America, wasn’t a good idea fora number of different reasons at that time.

Our weekly phone calls would have to do.

Christmas 2018 happened to fall on a Tuesday this year, when I get my visits here at MDC Brooklyn where I’m still waiting to hear the outcome of my appeal.

My son, along with his sister Nia and my mother were coming to visit.

In our recent phone conversations, I asked him not to get too emotional with the tears.

Drew of course, sticking to his true form, denied my request.
“I’m just a very emotional person and I won’t be able to hold it back,” said with a flamboyancy I had no choice but to accept.

Walking through the visiting room door, a surprised lump caught my throat as I laid eyes on my son, looking like he stepped off the cover of the GQ magazine.

While he kept his cool, it was I that was struggling to hold back the flood of tears as we embraced and I gave my son a kiss.

The time flew by and after another strong hug and kiss goodbye, I gave the same to my mother and daughter, then doubled back for a third hug and kiss, thanking Drew for this incredible gift to end the year with.

“Unable to disguise the impact of Maria’s news when I walked in the unit, my friend Twin, wasn’t far behind me after I went into my cell to sulk. Twin’s called my bigger little brother, who’s been my work out partner since he arrived at Canaan from Lewisburg about a week after I did. At 5’9, he was tipping the scale at 260 pounds back then, but after a few months of working out hard together six days a week, he dropped down to 215 pounds. Although he still struggled with a sweet tooth, that he’s had since childhood, like the blue cookie monster from Sesame Street, he’s one of the few people that survive my militant boot camp style encouragement to make it through some very tough workouts.

Twin grew up in Pittsburg P.A., and in 2002, got sentenced to 20 years for possession of a few dime bags of crack cocaine. Before going to the gym each morning, we spend about 10-15 minutes having positive spiritual talks to start the day off with the right attitude.

When I began writing, Twin was the first one I would read my chapters out loud to and I trusted him with my first rounds of edits, which helped him gain a clearer insight by carefully reading what I wrote. We always look out for each other’s best interest in all situations.

“YO!” he said, walking in without knocking, finding me already under my covers with the blanket pulled over my head.

“Yooooooooo!” I moaned.

“What’s wrong? How was the visit?” he asked.

Peeking out from under the covers, teary-eyed, letting out a deep sigh, I said, “Maria has left the building! She’s had enough.”

“Enough of what?”

“Of this, doing the bid,” I explained.

“She’s leaving you?”

“She’s left. It’s done. Over. I could see it in her eyes.”

Shaking his head, pulling up the chair and sitting down, both of us quiet for a couple of seconds, he then asked, “What about your daughters?”

“My mother will bring them,” I answered slowly climbing out from under the covers still fully dressed.

“Eddie, you already know what it is. It’s not ‘if’ they’re going to leave, it’s ‘when’ they’re going to leave.” Twin repeated his mantra, stemming from his own broken heart.

“Nah, I know. I’ve been here before. It’s part of doing time.”

I was hurt, mad, angry, not eating, hardly sleeping and foreboding locking in at night when all I could do was lie in bed with excruciating images of Maria in the arms of another man, agonizing my aching heart. It was the first time I felt vulnerable to slipping back into my gangster ways. There were moments I felt like exploding, but didn’t and maintained my self-control.

After a month immersed with these tormenting thoughts and images, I realized more than ever that I needed to continue to practice what I’ve been preaching by consciously staying in control of what I thought about. Once I caught my self-thinking negatively or feeling sorry for myself, I’d find an activity to take my attention to something positive. Normally it was working out, which I was doing three or four times a day for at least an hour and a half each period. I was writing more and at night I always had two or three books on the table next to my bed to read myself to sleep. I brought a book light so I could read without disturbing my celli, which helped me to quickly fall back to sleep.

I choose to be patient with myself, knowing from prior experiences that the hurt and pain of a broken heart would heal in time. By continuing to be kind, friendly, helpful and honest, I attracted the same to my experience when I most needed it.”

I have no problem admitting that my gangster mentality stemmed from a false self-perception and lack of self-love to all the various gang members I’ve had as cellmates. When I discuss how I’ve refused to entertain those negative thought patterns to Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords that I’ve bunked with, most couldn’t imagine changing their lives being apart from their gang.

This was especially true for a 24-year-old Crip, from Long Island named Esco. Short, stocky, half black and half Puerto Rican with an innocent looking baby face that has fooled plenty of people when put to the test. He claimed to love the gang life. He swore he knew it all, talking me to death with his gang mentality from which he perceived the world.

Every day at 3:30 p.m. as soon as the cell door locked for the count, Esco would sit up from the top bunk, where he’d spend most of the day and start to talk.

“Eddie, these guys always come to you for advice. What they can’t think on their own?”

“Actually, for a lot of us, thinking on our own is what we’re learning to do.”

“You’re learning to think on your own? Who don’t know how to do that?”

“You’d be surprised, Esco. When you don’t know who you really are, you live according to the authority of others.” I laughed thinking about my own past identify crisis. “You of all people should know that.”

“Why should I know?”

“Because you’re a Crip and have to follow whatever your OG says,” I answered.

He climbed down the latter at the end of the bed, ready to debate. “Everybody falls under the authority of somebody. You follow the authority of these CO’s when they tell you to stand for the count,” he fired back.

“They don’t have to tell me to stand for count.”

“That’s because you’re already standing.”

“Exactly, under my own authority,” I said laying back on my bed with my hands behind my head, cradled by my pillow.

“Aren’t your followers under your authority?”

“My followers?”

“Yeah, Twin, Paradise, O, Tone, Javi and all those guys in and out of here all day asking you what to do, how to do it, and they listen because you think you’re smart from reading all those books.”

“It’s not that I think I’m smart, they trust me to give them positive advice.”

“Why don’t they ask me?” he wondered pulling his chair up along the side of my bed.

“Probably because we view things from a different perspective.”

“How’s that?”

“Esco, you’re still relatively young, trying to prove yourself in an attempt to figure out who you are.”

“Prove myself! I know how I give it up!! Ask about me! My name rings bells out in the streets!”

“I never heard of you!” I said shaking my head flashing a grin.

“That’s because you been locked up for so long! Call out on the streets and you’ll see. I bang! It’s what I do!”

“But what does it get you?”

“Respect!”

Squinting my eyebrows together I asked, “Banging gets you respect? What are you banging for?” sitting up from my laid back position, giving him my full attention.

“For my set, my block! It’s what I do! I wasn’t a pretty boy, getting money type like you Eddie. They call it gang banging because I bang!” he emphasized all hyped up, pounding his fist in his chest like a silverback gorilla.

“And all that banging is causing you those problems out in the streets.”

“What problems? I’m good in my hood.”

“Esco, you sit here every night and day telling me your war stories against the Latin Kings and the Bloods.”

“Cause I give it up on those mother fuckers!”

“And they give it up on you! The Bloods ran up on your girlfriend’s car and shot you in the leg. The Latin Kings, shot up your baby mother’s house, thinking you were there. Your son could have got hit.”

“That’s because they’re scared of me and know I’m a threat!” He defended, raising up out of his chair, walking over to the cell door to stare at himself in the six magnetic mirrors I have on the door.

“Who’s scared of you?”

“They’re all scared of me!” he said, looking back over his shoulder, nodding his head.

“They’re not scared of you, simply because they’re banging on you and although you’ve gotten away, they killed your cousin Russ on his 21st birthday.”

“Worry stems from a degree of fear, which is difficult to overcome because it’s how most of us are conditioned to think.”

“Conditioned to think?” Carlos said, standing up walking over to the C.D. player and lowering the volume. “I don’t know how you were taught to think,” he said walking back over to his chair, “but I’m not conditioned or trained to think any type of way.” Shaking his head, sitting back down.

“How did we go from praying and the spirits to how we think?” Jose asked.

“God has everything to do with it,” I said, “because, it’s God’s law, but you’re not praying to God, you’re using the laws already established. This is why it’s as if some people’s prayers are answered and others aren’t. Some people know how to direct the energy using the law, depending on God’s law to bring about the result, some do it very consciously and have a strong faith and some do it unconsciously without understanding the process.”

“So what do you believe? In these laws or God and the spirits?” Jose asked, pulling his chair closer.

All eyes fell on me.

I paused again for a moment, “I understand that there is an all-wise, intelligent, all-knowing powerful Creator,” I began, “Call it God, spirits, the Universe or call it our higher power, it’s all part of us and we are part of it.”

“Now you’re part of God?” Paradise asked.

“Yes,” I said looking him dead in the face, “and so are you. Many of the mainstream religions teach that we’re separated from God or the source of all life but that’s not true.”

“How do you know?” Carlos challenged.

“Because it doesn’t make sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because a God of love wouldn’t want to be separated from her greatest creation.”

Everything I learned, revealed divine consciousness is God dwelling within and outside of us. The good and the bad, the hot and the cold, all of it is God. By putting things in that context, I didn’t have to know and understand everything. I was working on living with more trust and appreciation of the process by allowing moments to unfold.

I heard a story on the news which helped me stay grateful for all that I had and kept life in the proper perspective.

A young mother had just left church on Easter Sunday, in the Bronx with her family and had her young baby boy less than two years old, strapped in his car seat.

A stray bullet traveled through the back door, killing her son.

Situations like this used to be my justification for why there can’t be a God. On what level did the Universal laws get activated to bring that experience about? I believe God is in control. But hearing stories like that at times – wasn’t convincing.

Nia, my youngest child, was close to that same age when the story broke. I couldn’t imagine the suffering that the family was experiencing. I wanted that child’s life to not be a random act of violence. I used that incident to realize how blessed I am to be able to see my daughters every week, kissing and holding them in my arms, even if it’s only for an hour in the crowded visiting room.

I’m sure that the child’s mother would change situations with me, no hesitation involved, happy to be facing 45 years, as long as her baby boy was alive. I decided then on that I would never complain about being in prison. I’ve experienced how important the right attitude was dealing with difficult situations that were ultimately based on your perception and faith.

“If only someone would have explained to me then, what I’ve now come to learn,” I thought, looking out on the unit, seeing impressions of myself at earlier stages in life when I had a gangster mentality, convinced I knew it all.

Not only am I indicted for a drug conspiracy, but I was under investigation for extortion, a string of burglaries and armed robberies connected to a crooked Suffolk County cop, a group of shady lawyers and one of the Mafia’s five organized crime families.

When Erick Sermon went head first out a fourth-floor window, I was the first person called. My crew had a reputation to dish out street justice. There was no aspect of this gangster lifestyle I didn’t participate in.

That first year of incarceration, was one dramatic court hearing after another. Each taking a toll on my mother. When she learned that my friends were cooperating with the government against me, she took matters into her own hands.

Mom walked quietly but carried a big stick.

My mother had a reputation of her own in the streets.

The district attorney learned that Mamma Wright was in Gestapo mode and brought it to the judge’s attention at the end of my hearing.

“Your honor, there’s one last issue I would like to address, concerning the defendant’s mother,” the prosecutor said pointing to my mother in the courtroom.

John, turned around with raised eyebrows, looking at my mom who smiled, shrugged her shoulders, listening to what was said.

“What’s your concern?” the Judge asked.

“We’ve received information that Mrs. Wright has confronted a number of potential witnesses and we would ask the Court to advise her to stop. She’s attempting to obstruct justice.”

My mother kept smiling.

Then the Judge addressed her directly, “Mrs. Wright, although the Court does understand a mother’s love for her son, please cease contact with witnesses involved in this case. Interfering with a federal investigation is a serious crime. Please allow your sons’ lawyer, who I’m sure has a licensed investigator, address any issues that have any significance to this case.”

“O.k.,” my mother said, nodding her head, still smiling at me as I was lead out of the courtroom.

I admit it’s a learned behavior, especially in my current living conditions, back on appeal here at M.D.C. Brooklyn.

I’ve found that the key is learning to put life in the proper perspective, a perspective from which you have a choice to choose.

That’s what determines the conditions of our lives anyway, a series of choices that attracted the situation we find ourselves in NOW.

So NOW, what choices are we making?

I choose to be positive and optimistic regardless of what’s going on, and I’m faced with monumental challenges that don’t always appear to be working in my favor.

But I have this secret power of faith that I’m always able to rely on in difficult times.

Fears and worries of future events, only hijack the essence of the presence of NOW, cutting one’s self with a double-edged sword.

I choose to be happy and grateful, living in the moment of NOW because in all reality, NOW is all we have.

If I allow my mind to wander with all the should of’s, could of’s, and what if’s, I’d stress myself out, losing all the peace and poise I’ve learned not to take for granted.

I entertain a certain mental attitude of gratitude, that conforms to my spiritual system of belief, and choosing to cherish the moment of NOW positively, is a determining factor to the unfoldment of the conditions I attract to the NOW of my future.

There is an impelling creative force at work in our lives, directed by our thoughts and emotions. The choice to choose in this moment of NOW, expresses to the world who you are. If your not happy with that choice, in that same instant of NOW you can change.

The choice is always yours and always has been. Yet, when we find ourselves in undesirable conditions, accepting responsibility for our bad choices is hard to admit.

But NOW that you know, NOW you can do better, and there’s no more perfect time to apply what you NOW know then NOW!!